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A 1997 chapter by the author concluded that evidence of direct interaction between Cahokia and the large Mississippian center at Moundville, Alabama, was negligible. This chapter updates that assessment, especially in light of much recent research on the earliest period at Moundville. Exotic artifacts include infrequent Mill Creek chert bifaces and hoe chips, a Missouri flint clay effigy pipe, and sheet copper objects with possible Cahokia connections. Mound architecture includes a “greathouse” arguably built in a Cahokian style. Even so, evidence of direct contact between the two centers remains minimal, and there is no evidence of Cahokian involvement in Moundville’s emergence.

Scholars have only recently begun to investigate Mississippian mortuaries as important sites for the living as well as the dead. The archaeological signatures of mortuary practices not only reflect the status of the deceased but were also shaped by the social aspirations of the living. Archaeological investigations have revealed that Mississippian mortuary practices were not uniform across the southeastern and midwestern United States. The Moundville site, located in the Black Warrior River valley of west-central Alabama, was the political and ceremonial capital of one of the largest and most complex Mississippian polities in the southeastern United States. This essay examines the social and spatial dimensions of Moundville mortuary practice by documenting and interpreting the size, arrangement, and composition of selected Mississippian cemeteries at the site. These cemeteries, uncovered during the 1939 and 1940 excavations of the Moundville Roadway, exhibit considerable internal variation in terms of age, sex, and mortuary treatment. Based on their composition, small size, strategic location, and duration, small corporate kin groups probably used these cemeteries to assert social and spatial claims within the Moundville polity.

Zooarchaeological and archaeobotanical data accumulated by 30 years of modern research in the Moundville polity provide a nearly unparalleled opportunity to examine similarities and differences in food use between elite and nonelite households, between Moundville and its hinterlands, and among several ritual contexts. The data suggest that different social and behavioral (ritual versus domestic) roles are expressed in the composition of faunal assemblages, yet are not so clearly marked by associated plant remains. Integrating zooarchaeological and archaeobotanical information provides a more nuanced understanding of these two components of daily fare and ceremonial feasting.

Archaeologists often use terms such as “town” and “ceremonial center” without considering how they relate to ethnographic structures. The basic building block of Native polities in the American South was a social unit the English called a “town.” Here we argue Moundville was not such a town, but functioned more like a ceremonial ground, a place of priestly ritual where people from many towns gathered. Moundville’s history may have been driven by a changing balance of power between priestly officials situated at the center and town officials in outlying communities.

The chapter summarizes and reviews some recent trends in archaeological research at Moundville the second-largest Mississippian center ever built. Since 1998 the regional chronology has been expanded and refined by subjecting the many new radiocarbon dates to Bayesian analysis. Mound investigations have shown how monumental architecture was connected to social organization and played a role in the construction and erasure of social memory. Iconographic studies have shed light on world view and ritual and have focused attention on priestly ritual at Moundville. And our knowledge of activities at rural settlements and their connections with Moundville have been greatly expanded.

Regularities in the size, spacing, and rebuilding of Moundville’s earthen monuments, residential groups, and cemeteries provide insight into how Moundvillians defined and redefined their corporate group identities throughout the Mississippian period. Clans built and maintained earthen monuments to materialize their identities on a community level. Corporate subclan groups, on the other hand materialized their identities by constructing spatially discontiguous residential areas and cemeteries.

Hemphill is the name of a representational art style which is local to the Moundville region and seen in a variety of media. This paper examines the distribution of Hemphill-style artifacts in Moundville burials, and focuses on four distinct genres: engraved pottery, stone palettes, stone pendants, and copper gorgets. The distributions of Hemphill-style pottery and stone pendants show little patterning with respect to age and sex. Copper gorgets seem to be associated predominantly with males, but are not restricted by age. Stone palettes are found predominantly with adult males, with grave assemblages that are richer than usual. The four Hemphill genres seem to mark different socio-religious identities that are not exclusively elite.

Investigations at three small sites in Moundville’s rural hinterland (Gerald Wiggins, Grady Bobo, and Gilliam) indicate that these settlements were not only devoted to food production. Rather, they also were places where the rural populace took part in collective activities (e.g., feasting and ritual) and produced specialized goods (e.g., feather work). Other possible activities seen at these sites included the making and consumption of fineware ceramics.